While published on 9/11, this is not a story about 9/11.
“I think it is worth it. I think it is worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational”
— Charlie Kirk - April 5, 20231
Charlie Kirk is dead. Shot in broad daylight at a college campus, a single bullet ripping through the illusion that our politics are anything but war by other means.
This moment is not an isolated tragedy. It is a mirror. It reflects everything that is broken in our society—how we arrived here, how we justify it, and how we respond when the consequences we unleashed finally crash into us. Look closely and you’ll see the whole rot: a political culture that declared some lives “worth” sacrificing for the sake of ideology, a country flooded with weapons while abandoned communities drown in despair, a media ecosystem that pours gasoline on every spark, and a movement that, when faced with its own dead, doesn’t grieve but escalates. From the quote that opened this piece, to the shooting itself, to the chorus of reactions since—it’s all a perfect display of the sickness hollowing out America.
That is the world we live in. But it is not the world I fight for.
The World I Wish Existed
I fight for a world rooted in fairness, truth, responsibility, merit, and simplicity. A world where no one reaches for violence as the answer to their fear, their grievance, or their ambition. A world where the worth of a person is not measured in how useful their death can be spun, but in the full dignity of their life.
In that world, guns do not roam our streets like predators hunting for their next victim. Strangers who come to our country seeking a better life are not met with cages, cruelty, or suspicion, but with the chance to contribute, to belong, to thrive. In that world, decades of neglect are not allowed to calcify into despair that explodes in violent outbursts. The cycle of abandonment and retaliation is broken before it begins.
In that world, we do not punish children by stripping them of opportunity as penance for their parents’ mistakes. We do not make them pay for sins they never committed, closing doors to education, to health, to dignity. In that world, violence has no purchase—because justice, compassion, and fairness have already claimed the ground where violence grows.
In that world, Charlie Kirk would still be alive today. So would every schoolchild gunned down in a classroom, every worker lost to a massacre, every neighbor whose life was traded away as “worth it” in the bargain struck by men like Kirk.
But here’s one thing I’ve learned in many years of grappling with my own demons and thoughts: to expect from this world not what I wish from a world guided by my values, but by the values of this world; and to judge men not by my values, but by their own.
So, let’s take a quick look at the world being built right now—and at the values espoused by the people in charge of building it, including, until yesterday, Kirk himself.
The World Being Built Right Now by Kirk and His Friends
Let’s rewind just about a week. The U.S. conducted a military operation in the Caribbean. Eleven people dead. A boat struck by drone. The claim: drug trafficking and terrorism. The reality: summary execution of men in a vessel — in international waters, under murky legal justification. War crime at best. Civilian massacre at worst.
Days later, even after more about the incident had come to light and reports cast doubt on the official narrative and it became clear the men were not an imminent threat, JD Vance tweeted:
“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” — JD Vance
“Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime” — Critic
“I don’t give a shit what you call it.” — JD Vance
And of course, by this point, Kirk had already weighed in with his full support:
“They're in international waters. I don't know all the legal technicalities here. Obviously, it passed the muster because they authorized it, and they did a drone strike in the Caribbean. Alex, what are your thoughts here? I'm at least thrilled finally that we're using military force in our own hemisphere against people that would have done harm against the American homeland.”
— Charlie Kirk - September 3, 2025
So, here’s where things get chillingly clear: Kirk himself is excited. Not reluctant, not asking, “Are we sure?” Not insisting on evidence or restraint. Thrilled.
As legal experts like LegalEagle—a prominent lawyer on YouTube who also covers politics—have explained, this was illegal under U.S. and international law. The short version is that this was in every way illegal, given that the boat posed no real imminent threat to the United States that would demand the immediate execution of civilians without any kind of due process.
Now let’s not mince words: what all this shows is that Kirk has been helping build a world where:
If you feel threatened by someone — even across borders, even in international waters — summary execution becomes an acceptable policy tool.
International law, due process, legal norms — the very things that distinguish civilization from barbarism — are optional relics when it serves the right people.
The concern for “what is the law?” becomes secondary to “what feels like justice to us?”
In other words: this is not just about one strike. It is about the value system being constructed — one where power, fear, and ideology outweigh rights, due process, and the rule of law.
From Killing at Sea to Occupation at Home
We just watched our government vaporize a boat in international waters—no names, no charges, no trial—while the President’s allies bragged that due process is optional if you scream “cartel” loud enough. Kirk cheered it on. Thrilled, he said. That’s the value system: if you decide someone is a threat, you don’t prove it—you eliminate them.
Now take that logic and turn it inward.
Because this isn’t just about what our government is willing to do out there. It’s about what these men are openly demanding we do in here—to us.
“We need full military occupation of these cities until the crime desists. Period.”
— Charlie Kirk, August 2025
But here’s the thing: even if you strip away the rhetoric and just look at the numbers, the entire foundation of his demand collapses.
The Department of Justice has tracked violent crime for decades. And their own long-term data shows a steady decline—falling year after year from the peaks of the 1990s to today. By 2023, violent victimization rates were less than a third of what they were thirty years earlier.
This isn’t opinion. It’s not partisan spin. It’s the government’s own numbers. Crime is down, not spiraling out of control. The “crime wave” Kirk used to justify military occupation is a fiction. The DOJ’s own numbers show crime has dropped even further since 2023. The “wave of crime” Kirk ranted about isn’t real.
And if you want to talk about dangerous cities? The data is clear: the most violent cities in America today are in Red States. Kirk never once called for military occupation there.
So, let’s be plain: what he demanded had nothing to do with crime. It was about power. He wanted his political enemies—the people who live in America’s Blue cities—put under the thumb of the most powerful war machine in the history of mankind, trained not to police, but to kill, to annihilate. And he wanted to do it on a pretense so ludicrously false it collapses the second you glance at the data. That’s not law and order. That’s dictatorship. And to get there, he was willing to shred one of the oldest and most basic American laws: the Posse Comitatus Act, the barrier that keeps our armed forces from being turned inward against our own citizens. I wonder how long it would have taken Kirk to call for our military to perform the same summary executions he was thrilled for them to execute against foreigners. We will never know.
I could detail Kirk's record on a dozen other issues, but the throughline would remain the same: a chilling callousness toward the value of human life, foreign or American.
And now, he has drawn the winning ticket in his own twisted lottery. The very bargain he once called “worth it”—that some people must die every year for the sake of the Second Amendment—came due for him.
Yet, instead of reckoning with that truth, instead of reflecting on how their values built a world where Kirk himself could become the casualty he dismissed in others, the right responded in exactly the way they have trained themselves to respond: with vengeance. With escalation.
Within minutes, far-right figures were online calling for “civil war,” for “retribution,” for militias to reform and the Insurrection Act to be invoked.2 Elon Musk declared the left “the party of murder.” Marjorie Taylor Greene told her followers to “rise up and end this.” The fever swamps lit up with fantasies of revenge.
Meanwhile, from the other side of the aisle came what always comes: condemnation of violence in all forms, from Democrats and progressives alike.3 Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, Gavin Newsom, Wes Moore—all said it plainly: political violence is unacceptable. Even as they clashed with Kirk in life, they mourned his death in principle.
That contrast tells you everything you need to know.
If you believe in a world where life isn’t treated as expendable, then join us. The American Manifesto is more than words. Every subscription fuels the fight to expose the lies Kirk lived by and to build the world he denied.
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Lest We Be Judged by Our Own Values
Like I said before: I condemn vigilantism. I would never have someone executed without due process—unlike Charlie Kirk, who openly celebrated it when the targets were foreigners. I condemn the callousness of those who shrug at the wanton loss of life from gun violence, dismissing it as the “cost of freedom,” even as Kirk himself lived—and died—for that value.
But here is the truth: I feel no sympathy for anyone who falls victim to the very evils they themselves worked the hardest to unleash. Kirk did not just tolerate this world; he built it. He chose cruelty over fairness, propaganda over truth, domination over responsibility. He scorned merit in favor of loyalty, mocked simplicity in favor of chaos.
And to those on the left who would condemn my lack of sympathy: your tolerance and sympathy for absolute evil is at least half the reason for the success of men like Kirk and his friends in building a world where life is shed so pointlessly. To you I leave the words of MLK, whose life was also taken too soon at the hands of violence: "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence over that by the good people;" and the suggestion that maybe he spoke not of the silence of words as much as the silence of actions, as from the day this nation was born we have spoken of the ills of evil men and done little but for tolerating and appeasing it.
No, the answer to evil is not retribution or violence, but it also cannot be to view moral depravity as just another viable option in the "marketplace of ideas" where it can fester and spread like cancer or a policy for debate where it can corrode our laws and erode our democracy. If there is any tragedy to be lamented is that Kirk was as much a child—and a victim—of the right's lust for blood and soil and theocracy as the left's blind and desperate desire to accept and entertain all ideas, however toxic, as good faith and worthy of debate.
And now, in the aftermath, I see no reckoning—only escalation. I see no reflection—only threats. From his allies, the rhetoric is clear: vengeance, civil war, militias, revenge. From the left, the condemnation of violence remains consistent. That contrast alone is its own indictment. So, I will continue as I always have: judging the world not by the values I wish it had, but by the values it truly upholds—and judging men not by the values I wish they lived by, but by the ones they chose to embody. And when those values are cruelty, violence, and contempt for life itself, then no tears are owed. Not to Kirk. Not to the regime he cheered. Not to the world he fought to make real.
Alex Kasprak, Charlie Kirk once said some gun deaths ‘worth it’ in order to have Second Amendment, Snopes, Sept. 10, 2025
Verifies Kirk’s April 5, 2023 statement dismissing annual gun deaths as “worth it” to preserve the Second Amendment, the quote that frames this article.
David Gilbert, ‘War Is Here’: The Far-Right Responds to Charlie Kirk Shooting With Calls for Violence, WIRED, Sept. 10, 2025
Documents immediate escalation rhetoric—“war,” “vengeance,” militias, Insurrection Act—before any motive was known, underscoring the right’s turn to retaliation over reflection.
Chris Stein, ‘Despicable’: Republicans and Democrats Condemn Violence After Charlie Kirk Killing, The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2025
Shows bipartisan condemnation and notes the shooter’s motive was still unknown; contrasts Democratic calls to reject political violence with some right-wing blame-casting.
Really nice essay. I'll be sharing it evrywhere. Democracy Now did a wonderful segment on it with Jeff Sharlet!
Reposted from another Substack because I think it's important to spread:
I would like to remind them that El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (aka Malcolm X) was taken out by one of his own people. The same can be said for the Romanov family. Even Nazis turned on Hitler, so speculation on the motive here is useless. But some think it's fine to make political points on the backs of the dead. What would Charlie say?